Today’s soundtrack: extra extra, read all about it
Today at 8:02pm: staggering



Hi, I’ve been buried and I just clawed my way out of the rubble of freelance work. Not fully, I’ve still got another deadline for Monday. I am sleep-deprived and delirious as I write this.

I just spent three days working for The Germans (an activity I will henceforth refer to as Deutschmania) and let me tell you, they really get their money’s worth out of you. Last night I went to bed at 4am and woke up this morning at 6am to finish the project. The only thing that made it bearable was that I managed to, er, acquire an MP3 of Honey Cone’s “Want Ads.”

Honey Cone, Honey Cone. Motown is its own thing, a lonely and beautiful animal. I realize I am an old man of sorts because I routinely refer to the stuff they play on the radio these days as “crap.”

“Want Ads” hit the charts in April of 1971, four months before I was born; I’m convinced I heard this song in the womb.


On Day One of Deutschmania I got to see their new office space, a ridiculously huge and sun-filled loft on Astor Place. It’s so big you can see it from outer space. I’m not good at estimating but I’d say it was about eleven square miles. If they poisoned you at one end of the loft and left the antidote on the windowsill at the other end, you’d be fucked.

Although the office is spic-and-span and well-appointed, I was surprised to find they’re still running Apple’s System 9, like a bunch of savages. “System nine!” I wanted to shout. “Why you people are no better than barbarians!” Then I would put my foot through the monitor and scald the male receptionist with a well-aimed cup of coffee. Sometimes I wish I was an out-of-control movie director.

But seriously, though. If you still use OS 9 you might as well stop eating with utensils and never shower again.


Yesterday was Day Two of Deutschmania. I let go of the mouse around 5pm to take a break. The firm’s matriarch, an older, detail-oriented and constantly worried-looking German woman, was out for a meeting and wouldn’t be back ‘til 7pm.

With two hours to kill I stumbled down Broadway, exhausted and wondering if my eyes were bleeding. Checked my phone messages and returned a call to Wendy.

“I’m actually in your neck of the woods,” I said, stopping at the corner of Waverly. Wendy goes to film school at NYU and in that neighborhood, they probably own everything from the sidewalk under my feet to the rooftop holding the antenna through which my cell call was being routed.

“Oh really? Come meet us at Café Reggio,” said Wendy. She neglected to mention who “us” was but I was too tired to care. I trudged over to Macdougal Street like a lame horse limping into the home stretch.


Last time I was at Café Reggio, you could smoke inside and they were filming a David Schwimmer movie, which makes it maybe eight or nine years ago. (I know, I know, some of you are going “There’s no such thing as a David Schwimmer movie.”)

Walking inside I saw the café was completely unchanged, except there was something strange in the air--fresh oxygen--and no ashtrays to be seen. Wendy and three filmmaker friends, all female, were sitting at the “nook” table, wedged into a closet space by the bathroom.

Wendy’s three friends--one of whom is the cutest lesbian I’ve ever met--were clearly artists, judging by their scruffy looks, low-maintenance style and complete lack of fashion pretension. I like people like this, or differently put if I have to be around people I’d prefer they were people like this.

No one looked up or said hello when I joined the table, sparing me the obligation of having to introduce myself or make small talk. Relieved to have dodged yet another social burden, I ordered a tea and took a load off at the next table, seeing as the “nook” table fits only four on a good day. The café’s phone is also mounted on a wall in the nook, so the waiter occasionally reaches over your head to take a delivery order.

I let Wendy catch up with her friends unmolested while I had a staring contest with my tea. (I won, the tea blinked.) My ass began slowly fusing with the chair on a molecular level while I tried to rid my head of work issues and relax.

“The reason I called is I want to introduce you to one of my film professors,” Wendy said to me during a slow spot in the conversation. “Can you come into our class on Tuesday to do some acting exercises in front of the class?”

I wanted to tell her I hate actors and therefore would have to begin hating myself even more, but I was so tired I would’ve agreed if she’d said “Can you come into our class on Tuesday to be roundly sodomized by a voracious group of professional clowns?”

I guess some part of me is curious, which is really why I said yes. After all, the worst thing that can happen is I can make a complete fool of myself in front of a roomful of people while being roundly sodomized by professional clowns.

I wonder what the therapy bill would look like for that one.

Not to mention the attendant psychosomatic ailments. I bet my butt muscles would clench up every time I saw Ronald McDonald or Placido Domingo, one of the two.


Jesus, where am I going with this entry. I don’t know if these sentences are making much sense, I’m running on very little sleep right now. But I feel compelled to write ‘cause I’m fucking stressed out. I used to think it was severe workloads that brought stress on but now I think it’s the increased people contact that comes with severe workloads.

Tonight we had rehearsals for the Movie Talkers thing and I started thinking about actors and what they represent. And wondering, why do I dislike people so much?

[insert boring explanatory interlude below]

In high school my lacrosse coach sat me down in the lockerroom for a heart-to-heart and an apology after he’d roughed me up for doing something I thought insignificant.

“The things you don’t like about other people are the things you don’t like about yourself,” he told me, and I’ve never forgotten it. I know that statement sounds obvious to you now, but to a 16-year-old virgin, stuff like that changes your little virgin paradigms.

A couple weeks later I lost interest in going to class, and later that month I lost my virginity. It was, on balance, a good semester.

So I guess the answer is, I dislike being around people because I am people.


I’m going to bed now. I know in two weeks I’m going to read this entry and be like “Who the fuck wrote this?” But I don’t care because I’m going to bed.